complementary medicine – exposing academic charlatans

Let’s be clear: pseudoscience kills. And they are being employed with total impunity thanks to European laws that protect them.

They kill thousands of people, with names and family. People such as Francesco Bonifaz, a 7-year-old boy whose doctor prescribed homeopathy instead of antibiotics. He died in Italy [1]. People like Mario Rodríguez, who was 21 years old and was told to use vitamins to treat his cancer. He died in Spain [2]. People like Jacqueline Alderslade, a 55-year-old woman whose homeopath told her to stop taking her asthma medication. She died in Ireland [3]. People like Cameron Ayres, a 6-month-old baby, whose parents did not want to give their child “scientific medicine” [4]. He died in England. People like Victoria Waymouth, a 57-year-old woman who was prescribed a homeopathic medication to treat her heart problem. She died in France [5]. People like Sofia Balyaykina, a 25-year-old woman, who had a cancer that was curable with chemotherapy but was recommended an “alternative treatment”, a mosquito bite treatment. She died in Russia [6]. People like Erling Møllehave, a 71-year-old man whose acupuncturist pierced and damaged his lung with a needle. He died in Denmark [7]. People like Michaela Jakubczyk-Eckert, a 40-year-old-woman whose therapist recommended the German New Medicine to treat her breast cancer. She died in Germany [8]. People like Sylvia Millecam, a 45-year-old woman whose New Age healer promised to cure her cancer. She died in Netherlands [9].

European directive 2001/83/CE has made –and still makes— possible the daily deceiving of thousands of hundreds of European citizens [10]. Influential lobbies have been given the opportunity to redefine what a medicine is, and now they are selling sugar to sick people and making them believe it can cure them or improve their health. This has caused deaths and will continue to do so until Europe admits an undeniable truth: scientific knowledge cannot yield under economic interests, especially when it means deceiving patients and violating their rights.

Europe is facing very serious problems regarding public health. Over-medicalization, multiresistant bacteria or the financial issues of the public systems are already grave enough, and there is no need to add to that gurus, fake doctors or even qualified doctors who claim they can cure any disease by manipulating chakras, making people eat sugar or employing “quantic frequencies”. Europe must not only stop the promotion of homeopathy but also actively fight to eradicate public health scams, which implicate more than 150 pseudo-therapies in our territory. Thousands of citizens lives depend on that. In fact, according to recent research, 25.9 % of Europeans have used pseudo-therapies last year. In other words, 192 million patients have been deceived [11].

Some believe there is a conflict between freedom of choice for a treatment and the removal of pseudo-therapies, but this is not true. According to article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every person has a right to medical care. Lying to patients in order to sell them useless products that could kill them breaks the right to true information about their health. This way, even if a citizen has a right to refuse medical treatment when properly informed, it is also true that nobody has the right to lie to obtain profit at the expense of someone else’s life. Only in a world in which lying to a sick person would be considered ethical, could we allow homeopathy—or any other pseudo-therapy—to continue to be sold to citizens.

Effective treatments being replaced by false ones is not the only danger of pseudo-therapies. Obvious delays in therapeutic care occur when a person gets false products instead of medication at the early stages of a disease. Many times, it is already too late by the time they get treated with proper medicine. Moreover, several of these practices have serious effects on their own and may cause damage or even death because of their side effects.

Many pseudo-therapists argue that “the other medicine” comes with side effects as well, which is true indeed. However, the difference resides in that pseudo-therapies cannot cure a disease or improve your health, and because of that patients assume risks in exchange of promises that are a scam, according to the full weight of the scientific evidence available. Lying to a sick person is not another type of medicine, it is simply lying to a sick person.

Every country has to face the issue with pseudo-therapies in its own ways. Yet it is not acceptable that European laws protect the distortion of scientific facts so that thousands of citizens can be deceived or even lead to their deaths.

We, the signatories of this manifest, therefore declare that:

Scientific knowledge is incompatible with what pseudo-therapies postulate, as in the case of homeopathy.

European laws that protect homeopathy are not admissible in a scientific and technological society that respects the right of the patients not to be deceived.

Homeopathy is the most known pseudo-therapy, but it is not the only one nor the most dangerous one. Others, such as acupuncture, reiki, German New Medicine, iridology, biomagnetism, orthomolecular therapy and many more, are gaining ground and causing victims.

Measures must be taken to stop pseudo-therapies, since they are not harmless and result in thousands of people affected.

Europe needs to work towards creating legislation that will help stop this problem.

Europe being concerned about the misinformation phenomena but at the same time protecting one the most dangerous types of it, health misinformation, is just not coherent. This is why the people signing this manifesto urge the governments of European countries to end a problem in which the name of science is being used falsely and has already costed the life of too many.

[This manifesto was reproduced with permission. Scientists in other countries who take healthcare and science serious should put more pressure on their politicians and regulators to, uhmm, wake up, because this is by no means a European problem, it is a global problem – please sign the manifesto]

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Is this justice? I just don’t think so. When you read about the horrific circumstances in which this poor boy died, then this is a terrible judgement. Furthermore, this verdict now provides a safety net for parents who consider themselves ‘open-minded’, ‘making use of their freedom of choice’ and ‘being in charge of their children’s health’. And this in an environment with a rapidly increasing number of utter ridiculous and dangerous quackery being peddled to defenceless children (the anti-vaxx movement is also a case in point).

In short; slapping therapy involves slapping yourself or being slapped by someone else until (severe) bruising occurs, which is claimed to be ‘toxins’ that’s being released by your body (it is in fact nothing more than a very cruel form of child abuse). So, this poor child was taken of his insulin which caused him to start vomiting and eventually faint, which prompted his parents and the slapping therapist, Hongchi Xiao, to employ ‘emergency slapping’ to revive the child. Quite predictably and unfortunately, he died.

An unrelated photo regarding ‘slapping therapy’ that I found on internet. This is child abuse!!!

This level of delusion is very hard to comprehend, and with this verdict the chances are very good that this sort of incident will become more common. For some background on this case, detailing all those involved in this tragedy you can find here and here. Below is the very short newspaper article reporting on the outcome of this court case. I do not know if the parents will now face lesser charges or if this is it. The slapping therapist is yet to be sentenced.

Start of article

“Three relatives have been found not guilty of the manslaughter of a diabetic six-year-old boy who died after attending a Chinese slapping and stretching therapy workshop in Sydney.

The boy’s mother, father and grandmother, who were accused of breaching the duty of care they owed the boy through gross negligence, had pleaded not guilty to his manslaughter in April 2015.

A NSW District Court jury, which was told the boy’s last insulin injection to treat his type 1 diabetes came on the first day of the week-long “radical” workshop, on Friday found the trio not guilty of manslaughter.”

This post was deleted at the request of the Australian company, Unichi – for the time being at least. There is absolutely no use in testing a Olympic athlete for steroids a month after the Olympics so I will do my best to get the original samples from China so that I can do independent testing, and based on those results I will re-post (or not) with the additional test results.

There are 3 scenarios that needs to be considered.

It’s all a hoax

The hormones was accidentally or intentionally added during production of the Rosehip complex.

The product was laced with hormones anywhere within the supply chain – in this case the company would probably be unaware that this occurred.

In short. I need to get my hands on those samples.

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And so the long-awaited trial against a super quack finally begins. Yesterday the Sydney Morning Herald published an article documenting the court proceedings of the notorious “Slapping Therapist” Hongchi Xiao, whose ‘failure’ to manipulate a 6yo boy’s ‘life force’ (Chi) by slapping him led to the boy’s death (another victim fell in the UK, but he was extradited to stand trial in Australia). Here you can find some background info regarding this tragedy. I’ve copied the article below and afterwards I will give some comments, which may, or may not, contain a number of swear words.

Start of article

“A six-year-old boy who was subjected to “slapping healing” was not given insulin, was forced to fast for three days, and had his arms and legs slapped as he laid on a Sydney hotel bed dying and unable to breathe, a court has heard. The child, who cannot be named, had Type 1 diabetes and was given his final insulin injection on April 22, 2015, at the beginning of a traditional Chinese medicine workshop at Hurstville in Sydney’s south.

His health deteriorated and he died five days later from diabetic ketoacidosis, a build-up of acid in the body after no insulin is administered.

The boy’s mother, father, maternal grandmother and Chinese medicine practitioner Hongchi Xiao have been charged with manslaughter, with the Crown alleging each owed a duty of care to the boy that they breached through gross negligence. All have pleaded not guilty.

On Wednesday, at the opening of a trial at the NSW District Court, a jury heard the boy vomited frequently in the days before his death and became so weak he had to be pushed around in a pram because he could not walk or stand. Crown prosecutor Sharon Harris said the boy’s mother took part in a police interview after his death and told officers his face and eyes began to turn yellow on the day he died, he couldn’t talk or open his eyes and his breathing was not normal. People at the workshop then slapped the boy on the arms to wake him up.

The child’s mother and grandmother were allegedly told the boy was adjusting to the “paida lajin” treatment – which involves stretching and being slapped to “activate the body’s self-healing power” – and he would improve after toxins were released from his body. That night, on the evening of April 27, the boy was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Hurstville with his grandmother when he started vomiting a black substance and had a seizure, the jury heard. Ms Harris said another patron at the hotel earlier heard slapping sounds coming from the room.

The boy’s grandmother, who does not speak English, ran hysterically out of the room to raise the alarm. Ms Harris said Mr Xiao and his associates, who had been having dinner nearby, returned to the hotel and went to the boy’s room, where they began slapping him on his limbs. “[The boy] wasn’t breathing by this stage and he didn’t have a pulse,” Ms Harris said.

Hotel guests and staff performed CPR on the six-year-old before emergency services arrived and he was taken to St George Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased.

Ms Harris said the workshop, which involved slapping some participants until they were “quite heavily bruised”, claimed insulin could be generated by slapping and stretching and such exercises could also heal Parkinson’s disease and cancer. She said the boy’s mother was drawn to the workshop after the recommendation of a friend, because her son was growing tired of being injected with insulin four times a day and she wanted him to be like other kids. The mother’s barrister said her client was not an “alternative therapy fanatic” looking for a “miracle cure” for her son. “She tells police about being betrayed by Master Xiao, a man she refers to as a doctor,” the barrister said.

“This trial is about misplaced trust, and whether misplaced trust in all the circumstances of this case amounts to manslaughter.”

Mr Xiao’s barrister Robert Cavanagh said his client did not owe a duty of care to the boy and disputes that he told the boy’s mother to stop giving him insulin. “It’s our case he did nothing that caused the death of [the boy],” Dr Cavanagh said. He said the method of “alternative self-healing” taught by his client was not confined to slapping and stretching, and involved “many other things” including jogging and meditation.

The trial continues before Judge David Arnott.”

End of article

This article details a drama about people suffering from incomprehensible levels of delusion. What is striking, is the fact that at no time during this unfolding tragedy did any of the adults consider given this poor boy his insulin. His medical condition is known, an effective treatment is known and available, and yet, it simply does not occur to any of them. No, in the end they reverted to ‘emergency slapping’. I cannot get my head around this. What type of salesman can instil such an undying believe in a person’s mind that by manipulating Chi you can cure disease? Mr Xiao should seriously consider becoming a second-hand car salesman. With his power of persuasion, he will be the employee of the century.

My anger, however, is primarily directed towards the people in positions of power who continue to promote the existence of ‘Chi’ and that it can be manipulated by treatments and practices falling in the realm of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Prime examples to name but a few; Prof Alan Bensoussan, director of the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM). The brand new and much beloved parliamentarian Dr Kerryn Phelps – part of the NICM and their drive to integrate quackery with modern healthcare (it will be interesting to see how she uses her position in parliament to further the interests of the NICM). Dr Ven Tan, director of Tasly Healthpac (where this slapping therapy workshop took place) who was assisted by the NICM to integrate TCM with modern healthcare. In a separate court case the parents of the diseased boy have sued Dr Ven Tan and his ‘integrative medicine’ clinic. Hopefully they will also consider suing the NICM as they are the kingpins in establishing these ‘open-minded’ integrative clinics in Australia.

The sad part is that the number of these tragedies will in all likelihood only increase. Because Alan and the boys are hellbent on assisting the Chinese Communist Party to globalise TCM in all its forms. Why? Because they want to tap into the $170 billion TCM market. But they are clever. They have a safety net. They continue to insist that they only promote ‘evidence based’ treatments and the integration of these treatments with modern healthcare. As long as they promote TCM in general terms, without specifying treatments, they will continue to get away with murder. They know that many TCM practitioners are so delusional and have such a hatred of modern medicine, that many will insist that their patients should stop taking modern treatments. If you can manipulate Chi you simply don’t need anything else. It is a lucrative risk-free strategy. They make money by promoting Chi, and when things go wrong, the individual practitioner and the members of public who fell for their scam will be in trouble. The NICM gets away scot-free.

It is also a very effective strategy because in the last couple of years they have managed to convince authorities to establish a national registration board for TCM practitioners, which elevated TCM from quackery to an excepted healthcare profession. They managed to include TCM in the Australia-China free trade agreement, they convinced the regulators in Australia (TGA) to except Chi as a real thing. TCM producers can now sell ‘medications’ in Australia that influences ‘Chi’. Via the pacific office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) they have managed to convince the WHO to accept TCM in all its forms. Even the WHO now promotes and endorse TCM in general, again, without specifying which treatments or medications are effective. This strategy comes straight from Alan’s book of evil plans. The impact that all of this will have on healthcare is difficult to comprehend. What I do know is that this is a tragedy of epic proportions. The fact that China quite recently lifted the ban on rhino horn and tiger bones for medicinal use indicates that they promote all of TCM and the blatant lie that Alan continue to tell, that they only focus on ‘evidence-based’ treatments, is a smoke screen. We have now entered ‘Open Season’ – many will die. You can read about how Alan managed to get all of this done here, here and here.

I consider this court case as extremely important, because TCM is on trial and I truly hope that this case will wake people up (e.g. the minister for health, Greg Hunt). I will definitely keep an eye on proceedings and will update whenever new information becomes available.

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You ‘spineless bitch’! No, this is not what I am calling Dr Phelps, this was just one of the reactions from one of her fervent supporters on my article detailing her support of homeopathy. While homeopathy is quite easy to debunk (in short, it contains nothing), traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is somewhat more complicated because of its sheer size, history, the fact that most medications do indeed contain something and its politically loaded nature. However, TCM’s foundation is build on similar thoroughly debunked notions of manipulating a person’s life force with herbs, (endangered) animal material, needles and apparently via ‘treatments’ such as by slapping yourself. So, let us have a look at the role that Dr Phelps is playing in keeping these, and let’s be honest, quite dangerous ideas alive by using the highly effective smokescreen called ‘integrative medicine’.

The company you keep defines you

As a public figure Dr Phelps is obviously very careful about polishing and protecting her squeaky-clean image and is therefore careful with what she says or write. It is thus far better to look at the company she keeps. Dr Phelps is listed as an adjunct at the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM) hosted at Western Sydney University (WSU). On her campaign website she states that: ‘Dr Phelps is committed to teaching the next generation of doctors as Conjoint Professor at University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine and in the NICM at WSU.’ She is also a member of the NICMs advisory board which states that “The NICM Board will provide advice to NICM in the advancement of its objectives and priorities….” This is important because their main objective, as advised by Dr Phelps and others, is to integrate ineffective and sometimes dangerous remedies with modern healthcare.

This movement is called ‘integrative medicine’ and Institutes such as the NICM is responsible for expanding this movement (inter)nationally via their catchphrase; “the science of integrative medicine’ (translated; ‘the science of BSing the public’). Dr Phelps also owns her very own ‘integrative medicine’ clinic where she employs a naturopath who also happens to be the vice-president of the Australian Traditional Medicine Society who in turn supports all sorts of quackery (including TCM and homeopathy). Please have a look at their website.

So how do they do it?

The quacks with money

It’s a tightrope act. On the one side you have people such as the esoteric, energy healing, anti-vaccination, homeopathy-loving Judy Jacka. Or people such as the TCM practitioner Dr Ven Tan who the NICM assisted in setting up an integrative medicine clinic (Dr Tan has connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who actively pursues the globalisation of TCM). Another example is the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM – also connected to the CCP) who is now in the process of starting their very own TCM hospital in Sydney in collaboration with the NICM. When you read about what Judy Jacka, Dr Ven Tan and other like-minded people believe and say about complementary, alternative, traditional and integrative medicine, then it is very clear that they believe all remedies and treatments work, because it is based on the manipulation of life forces and energy fields. They see themselves as visionaries with the ability and power to heal by manipulating these ‘forces’. Here you can read about Judy Jacka’s ideas on ‘medicine’ and her stance on vaccinations (scroll down). And here is list of quackery that she supports – this webpage was quickly taken down after I’ve written a letter (here is a shortened version) to the vice chancellor of WSU, Barney Glover, complaining about excepting funding from people such as Judy Jacka, because people, including children, will and unfortunately did die as a result.

Now the NICM wants money, and this is exactly what they get, with Judy Jacka donating $4 million (WSU made her a honorary fellow, with Dr Phelps listed as a spokesperson regarding this donation), Marcus Blackmore donating $10 million (received an honorary doctorate from WSU) and at a time there was talk of $20-30 million from China in order to start the BUCM’s TCM hospital in Sydney (this is kept under wraps but I have some indirect evidence). Many clinics also donate smaller amounts, which the NICM does not always declare in their ‘scientific publications’ – clear scientific misconduct. Here is one example where they again deleted the web-page containing the information once I published about it, but the WSU management simply squashed the whole matter.

In return, all of these, lets be honest, quacks want credibility for themselves as well as the ‘medicine’ and ‘treatments’ that they happen to sell. The NICM is happy to provide this ‘credibility’ in exchange for money.

Those that threaten their plans (a.k.a. ‘spineless bitches’)

On the other side of this tightrope act you have the public, politicians, regulators and some brave scientists, and of course, science itself. One abused concept that they exploit to try and keep these people happy is ‘safety’. They lobbied regulators/politicians with examples of people who got hurt or died as a direct result of TCM with the explicit recommendation that to ensure public safety, TCM has to be regulated. It worked really well, because back in 2000 Victoria was the first to regulate TCM and in 2012 this has gone national, and suddenly TCM became equivalent with other evidence based modern healthcare professions. Since 2012 everything went into overdrive with TCM being included in the Australia-China free trade agreement. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) now excepts TCM ‘terminology’ (blood is cold, lack of yin/yang etc) as valid indications and even the World Health Organisation (WHO) are planning to include TCM as an evidence-based healthcare system (the NICM has a thick finger in the pie with all of these events – please read here, here and here).

But the fact of the matter is that they do not give a hoot about safety. They simply abused the concept in order to achieve their objectives. There are two important aspects regarding safety. 1. direct safety e.g. a specific herb containing a poisonous substance and 2. indirect safety e.g. lack of efficacy with people getting hurt or die because of neglecting a serious medical condition. A tragic example to illustrate this is the 10 babies that died and 400 that were sickened by a homeopathic remedy that was incorrectly diluted and contained high enough levels of deadly nightshade. This is a direct safety issue. But let’s say that the homeopaths did dilute everything away, like they should have, and these babies were given this remedy containing nothing to treat a serious medical conditions, then they might have died of their medical condition because they received no treatment. This is then an indirect safety issue. The NICM only focus on the former to reach their objectives whilst completely ignoring the latter which is by far the biggest killer of the two.

This is also the reason why they want to ‘integrate’ TCM with conventional medicine, because they know it lacks efficacy and is therefore an indirect safety issue. They know just as well as anybody else that these life forces don’t exist, and hence manipulating it with herbs, needles, whatever, simply cannot and do not work on its own.

However, to create public trust they invented, or at least, they are exploiting the notorious A+B vs B clinical trial design in which they split patients into two groups with both groups receiving a treatment that works, for example IVF (B). Then they add something that they know doesn’t work eg herbs, acupuncture (A) to only one group which then becomes the ‘treatment’ group. In effect, they are cleverly measuring the placebo response, in order to convince the ‘spineless bithces’ that there is indeed efficacy (or a level of indirect safety), all the while knowing that there isn’t. And sometimes they still struggle to even measure a reasonable placebo response – here is one excellent example where the Australian tax payer dished out more than $600 000 to measure the placebo response of acupuncture.

Here is a video (in English and German) of a presentation given in Germany by the Director of the NICM, Alan Bensoussan, explaining how they played this extremely successful tightrope act in Australia. This methodology will now obviously be used by similar institutes in other Western countries.

The impact on the health of people (and rhinos)

To keep the money rolling in they do however need to show that they truly believe in the magic of TCM and hence have no problem to promote rhino horn as an effective medicine. On their website they even listed an internet site where you can buy rhino horn – again quickly removed after they were notified about it. In their world, rhino horn is excellent to: “Clear heat, subdue Yang and cool blood, relieves fearfulness, detoxifying.” And can thus be used for: “High fever, sun stroke, trauma, mania, convulsion, sore throat, epilepsy, febrile disease, infectious disease, macula, bad skin conditions, subcutaneous bleeding.” They have no problem with this, but it all depends on who they are talking to, and on what side of this divide those people are. To add insult to injury one of the NICM’s business partners was even caught and jailed for having many kilograms of endangered animal parts, including rhino horn, in his possession. And as far as I can tell, they are still working with this TCM practitioner. Result. Three rhinos a day are blasted to smithereens to supply these quacks with their ‘remedies’.

And then Dr Phelps have the audacity to tweet about her opposition to live animal exports “We must bring this cruel trade to an end.” Yes, sure, but what about the slaughter of endangered animals to feed the insatiable TCM industry and their unquenchable thirst for more money? It’s about votes! “Polling confirms live export is a hot issue for voters in critical #Wentworth by-election”

Some, if not all, TCM practitioners are so delusional that they truly believe that they can manipulate ‘life forces’ and because of this, they obviously do not need modern healthcare. It is two opposing systems and their income obviously depends on the public believing in TCM. It is therefore quite common that a TCM practitioner will ‘rubbish’ modern healthcare and convince patients to forego their modern medication and only use TCM. According to Dr Phelps, she cares about the health of refugee children on Nauru and yet have no problem misleading parents, via her funders, to believe that they can cure their young son’s diabetes type 1 with ‘slapping therapy’, which aims to restore the flow of Chi (life force) through meridians. Unfortunately, this boy died because the practitioner told the parents to stop their effective medication. Here is another recent example – same story.

The big problem with the NICM, advised by Dr Phelps, is how they have colluded with the CCP and how they are facilitating the CCPs plans to globalise all of TCM (you can read about this extensive investigation here, here and here). This includes how they have lobbied regulators (TGA), the WHO, who both now recommends that TCM, without specifying which ‘medicines’ or ‘treatments’, be integrated with modern healthcare – but what they don’t tell you is that they (via one of the NICMs adjuncts, Michael Smith) was one of the primary drafters of the WHO’s recommendations. So, for the first time in the history of the WHO, they will now endorse TCM!!

It’s about money, and they could not care less about your safety. Here is a couple of recent headlines explaining the situation.

–$170b Global Chinese medicine market behind University of Western Sydney deal with Beijing

–State-sponsored quackery. China is ramping up its promotion of its ancient medical arts. That is dangerous for humans as well as rhinos

Their safety net

Intentionally misleading people, including children, who then get hurt or die can obviously get them into serious trouble. This was illustrated by the extradition of the Slapping Therapist from the UK (where another person died) to Australia. He is now in and out of court and quite recently the clinic providing this ‘treatment’ and its director (Dr Ven Tan) have also been sued. But unfortunately, the people who are actually responsible for creating and exploiting this growing chaos in healthcare, the NICM and ‘Dr’ Phelps, are still getting away with it. It is because they have a safety net. Calling for the ‘integration’ of only ‘evidence-based’ TCM with modern healthcare is in effect their safety net while performing their tightrope act.

All they need to do is to generalise without naming specific remedies or treatments. Create a bit of public suspicion in modern healthcare, call it ‘western medicine’ and feed of anti-western sentiment, hammer on the popularity of complementary medicines, the public’s’ ‘freedom of choice’, the need to ensure safety, the ‘growing body of evidence’ etc. and they know that the public will fall for it, while they continue to make money from this industry – and they will continue to get away with. Even when they are fully aware that children unnecessarily die because of what they are doing. If anyone asks them about ‘slapping therapy’ they will very quickly claim that they have never supported this specific treatment. They might even call it cruel and inhumane but they know that they have helped this clinic with ‘integrating’ TCM. They are so clever, but morally and ethically bankrupt.

For them the ‘money is in the magic’, and their challenge is to continue with their tightrope act for as long as possible. Unfortunately, they also have the backing of the Vice Chancellor Barney Glover (who is fully aware of all of this) and even the Chancellor, Peter Shergold – and this makes them almost untouchable.

Conclusions

The total extent of the damage that is being done by ‘Dr’ Phelps is impossible to know, but if she wins this election and has influence on government level then the healthcare system is in for a very tough time. If she can mislead young children about the effectiveness of ancient remedies while she knows that it is ineffective, she’ll be able to mislead just about anyone regarding anything. We all know how politics work. ‘if you support our motion, then we will support yours’ And this will be exploited by the NICM once she sets foot in parliament. I can only hope that the ASIO will have a look at her connections, specifically her CCP connections via the NICM and how they are planning to exploit it. It is a strange world we live in when people such as Dr Phelps (and Prof Bensoussan) who should be behind bars actually have a very good chance of getting into parliament.

If you happen to know anyone in Wentworth please forward this info to them. They, at the very least, need to know who they are voting for.

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Better Health! Excellent, let’s vote for Dr Kerryn Phelps. But hold your horses. While most people will think in terms of improved diagnostics and better, safer, less expensive medications and improved accessibility, others such as Dr Phelps have a different agenda. For some people, usually having some financial stake in alternative healthcare, ‘better health’ unfortunately means that they will exploit the current problems/deficiencies in the healthcare system to promote less effective, or even completely ineffective, medications to the general public. One can almost call this their ‘unique selling point’. But when a medication is completely ineffective none of the other issues (diagnostics, cost, safety etc) matters, and yet people such as Dr Phelps continue to promote this. In my humble opinion, a criminal activity, because ineffective treatments cause unnecessary harm and death.

But she is a clever one. As a well-known public figure, she cannot do all of the dirty work herself because she needs to keep her image squeaky clean. So, to get behind the swing of the bat, it is worthwhile to have a look at her collaborators in what I call, an ‘unholy Alliance’, and their dark world of deceit. Dr Phelps is an adjunct at the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), headed by Prof Alan Bensoussan. She is also part of the NICMs advisory board and states on her campaign website: “Dr Phelps is committed to teaching the next generation of doctors as Conjoint Professor at University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine and in the National Institute of Complementary Medicine at Western Sydney University.”

It is during these advisory board meetings, held in the herbal-essence filled back rooms at Western Sydney university, where they come up with their sinister plans of how to integrate ineffective treatments into the healthcare system. Let me put in plain language; ‘how to BS the public’. Let me explain at the hand of homeopathy (a next article will deal with vaccinations and traditional Chinese medicine).

Support for Homeopathy

Homeopaths are an interesting, although completely delusional, bunch of people – but they do have a very good sense of humour. They will for example take a substance, any substance (even imaginary ones), go into a state of delirium during a process called ‘proving’, and dilute the substance away – completely away. During this process they note their ‘symptoms/state of delirium/feelings’ which then becomes the indications, and like magic, the vial containing only solvent suddenly becomes a ‘medicine’. To understand their sense of humour, you just need to read about any ‘proving document’. Take for example the homeopathic remedy prepared from a Black hole. They affix a vial of alcohol to the viewing end of a telescope focused on Cygnus X-1’s location within the Cygnus constellation. After collecting the ‘substance’ they dilute it into oblivion with the delirious homeopaths taking this ‘medicine’ stating that it; “ … felt their teeth were “drawing inward.” So it makes perfectly sense that this homeopathic remedy is suitable to be prescribed for……..??

You also get homeopathic remedies prepared from; Excrementum caninum (yes, dog shit), condoms, colours, musical notes, Berlin wall etc. (Here you can find my top ten list of homeopathic remedies for 2017. If you can top any of these remedies, please let me know – I am busy compiling 2018’s list). One might now argue that all these examples are on the extremities of homeopathy, and yes sure, but it doesn’t really matter. You can also take any well-known medicinal herb, or even a real medicine such as an antibiotic, but as soon as you ‘prepare’ it according to the homeopathic principles, the medicine disappears which will render even the most effective antibiotic useless. The sad reality is that some homeopaths prescribe their remedies for serious conditions such as malaria and cancer which obviously leads to a lot of unnecessary harm and death.

Sure, the biggest risk is indirect, due to neglecting serious medical conditions, but there are also examples when homeopaths go into such as state delirium that they sometimes manage to get their dilutions wrong. For example; many babies died and hundreds were hospitalised in the US after a toxic substance (deadly nightshade) was not correctly diluted. Clearly homeopathy cannot possibly be included within the ‘Better Health” campaign promise?

So how does Dr Phelps support and exploit this? She operates a number of ‘integrative medicine’ clinics where naturopaths, who are known for their love of homeopathy and anti-vaccination tendencies, are employed. A couple of years ago Dr Phelps made the following comments in an article regarding the funding of homeopathy:

Start of excerpt

“Unfairly targeted?

But some doctors suggest homeopathy is being unfairly targeted.

“It smacks of a crusade to me,” says Professor Kerryn Phelps, president of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA), which promotes “the integration of safe, evidence-based complementary medicines and therapies with current mainstream medical practice”.

She does not believe homeopathy is having the kind of impact on private health premiums Harvey fears, and says there are “bigger fish to fry” when it comes to fixing the healthcare system.

Phelps says homeopathy can be easily criticised because it has a relatively small evidence base.

But, she suggests orthodox treatments are not subject to the same level of scrutiny.

“The Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year produced a meta-analysis of SSRI anti-depressants in mild to moderate depression and found them no better than placebo,” says Phelps, who is Conjoint Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales and a former president of the Australian Medical Association.

“If you are going to exclude treatments that don’t have an evidence base then we have to start looking at pharmaceuticals that don’t have an evidence base, surgical therapies that don’t have an evidence base.”

Matter of evidence

Dr Vicki Kotsirilos, who originally founded AIMA, says she is sympathetic to Harvey’s concerns but rejects some of his conclusions.

“To say that there is no evidence for homeopathy is actually incorrect and unfortunately a lot of people make those statements,” says the Melbourne-based GP, who points to evidence collected by the British Homeopathic Association.

“There have been systematic reviews that have shown that overall homeopathy is not anymore of benefit to placebo or of marginal benefit. But there have been some Cochrane Collaboration reviews that there is a little bit of research available for some therapies.”

She says some of the major studies quoted don’t properly take into account how homeopathy is used.

“When you prescribe homeopathy, it’s often individualised and you won’t use the same homeopathic remedy for one person with a particular disease to another person with the same disease,” says Kotsirilos.

She says homeopathy, and other complementary therapies, are particularly popular among patients who have suffered side-effects from medication, or where surgery is contraindicated.

“Out of all the complementary medicines it is the least understood, with the least amount of research,” says Kotsirilos, who calls for more funding for research.

“We need more research to be able to identify which patients might benefit from homeopathy and in what conditions, bearing in mind that there are people out there who choose to use this and we have to respect their choices.”

End of excerpt

(Vicki Kosirilos is obviously also part of this ‘alliance’ being a member of the NICM’s ‘Research Committee’). A couple of years ago the NHMRC did a thorough study on homeopathy and found it to be, surprise-surprise, ineffective and recommended that the public should not use homeopathy because they are putting their health at risk. This the Alliance cannot have, because it flies in the face of their plans to integrate ineffective remedies. The director of the NICM, Alan Bensoussan published a press release highlighting the ‘methodological flaws’ and that it doesn’t agree with all international reports on homeopathy etc. But it is during these advisory board meetings where they decide how and who should respond to this unfair ‘attack’ on their sinister plans (here you can read the minutes of one of their meetings). This job usually falls in the lap of Carl Gibson, the CEO of Complementary Medicine Australia – their attack dog.

He promptly published that the NHMRC report is “fatally flawed” and ends his press release with the prophetic words “Homeopathy has been around for hundreds of years, and I am sure will be around a lot longer than some of the critics.” Translated it simply means “We (Dr Phelps, the NICM and their whole alliance) do not accept that a complementary medicine is ineffective, and we will do whatever we can to continue to protect, promote and sell it”. They also lodged a complaint at the Commonwealth Ombudsman, claiming that the NHMRC report “…is inaccurate, highly misleading to the public and unjustly damaging to the credibility of the homeopathy sector. It is therefore essential that all published documents relating to the Homeopathy Review are rescinded in their entirety.” (there is some uncertainty about whether this complaint was actually lodged or not).

All that these people need to do is to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of the public, which is enough to ensure that people will continue to buy these ineffective remedies. Dr Phelps will continue to make real healthcare suspect, claim that her ‘medications’ are all natural, safe and evidence-based and that it will also save you a lot of money. But in reality, she and her Alliance does not give a hoot that people, including young children and babies, die because of what they are promoting – for them it is all about money!! (A good example of the type of people you need in such an Alliance is Prof Gregory Kolt. He was even found guilty of fraud; “As a result, the defendant fraudulently obtained a total of $5,864.15 from the Authority over a period of 14 months. When the matter was investigated, the defendant provided false information and documents.”)

A vote for Dr Phelps is a vote to give this unholy Alliance a foot in the federal door. She will provide easier access and opportunities for this Alliance to lobby government ministers in order to integrate their ineffective remedies with conventional healthcare. This, in my view, will be a travesty for the healthcare system. While homeopathy is one of the easier fake medications to debunk, Dr Phelps’s involvement and impact unfortunately gets a lot murkier. In a next article I will focus on vaccinations and how this alliance has infiltrated the World Health Organisation who now promotes, you guessed it, homeopathy and all sorts of other disproven and unproven traditional medicines.

An update (11/10/2018)

Clearly Kerryn Phelps have a cult – like following. People for whom she is a hero with her sword drawn riding on a rainbow coloured unicorn to save the day (so by the way, homeopaths also make ‘medicine’ from unicorns!) After I’ve posted this article on Reddit some called it “total bullshit”, “complete raving madness” and the poor author a “crazy or a stooge”, “spineless bitch” “unhinged individual”. So, I just thought I’ll add some information because maybe, just maybe, I can convince some of her followers – yeah right.

Here is an interesting example. One of the biggest supporters of Homeopathy is none other than HRH Prince Charles. He apparently give his cows homeopathic remedies in the hope that ………… I just don’t know. A wonderful technique that Dr Phelps and the unholy alliance exploit is called ‘Appeal to Authority’. This simply means that when a person such as Prince Charles say that he believes that medication X works, then many members of the public will simply follow his lead and up goes your sales. Because when the future king of England say that something works then it becomes irrefutable evidence that it does work – for some people at least. So, the unholy Alliance tasked Dr Phelps to get Prince Charles on board as a Patron of the NICM in order to provide them with extra ‘credibility’ which will obviously lead to increased sales (you can read about it here – very interesting document). I don’t think that he fell for it, probably because he does not want to be linked to a bunch of known cranks down under. But if memory serves me correct I might have sent them a letter warning them about the NICM and this might also have played a role in his decision not to join Kerryn Phelps and her unholy alliance.

Another example closer to home. When the NHMRC published their review on homeopathy one of the affronted groups in Australia that called for its immediate withdrawal was the ‘Australian Traditional Medicine Society’ (ATMS). The vice-president, Teresa Mitchell-Paterson, also happens to work in one of Dr Phelps’s clinics where she provides her naturopathic services. Have a look at the ATMS website under modalities to see what kind of quackery they promote. I just don’t know, but if you employ someone that will defend and promote homeopathy at all costs, then surely, I can claim that Kerryn Phelps supports homeopathy?

If you are a well-known scientist and you allow a tobacco company to list your name on their website, or for that matter, on an anti-vaccination website, then surely the public can infer from this that you lend your support to their products or ideas? If you are listed as a spokesperson in a press release detailing a multimillion-dollar donation received from a complete crackpot then surely the public can infer that you support this person’s ideas? So, the unholy alliance received millions of dollars from Judy Jacka who is a esoteric energy healing crackpot with a healthy disliking of vaccinations and a love for homeopathy and all other quackery you can think of. Western Sydney University promptly made her a Honorary Fellow (because maybe she will then give them more money). Judy is part of the ‘Health Australia Party’ (HAP) also known as the ‘lunatic fringe movement’. So, if any journalist reads this please ask spokesperson Dr Phelps, WTF? Please explain!! (Ah, maybe Kerryn is an undercover HAP agent!!).

She is a well-known public figure and therefore has to be very careful about what she says in public. She only says what people want to hear, in this sense not unique, because this is what most politicians do. But if you really want to know who she is, then it is far better to have a look at what she, and the people she associates herself with, does. In that ‘very interesting’ document you’ll also see that they have worked for many years to get the Chinese Communist Party’s linked Beijing University of Chinese Medicine to open a TCM hospital in Sydney. And just recently I’ve read about a person who died in Sydney because of TCM/acupuncture – the article is called ‘Dressed-up quackery…’ And yet this unholy alliance wants to integrate TCM with modern healthcare (I have investigated this issue quite extensively and you can read about it here, here and here.).

Any comments, suggestions, tips ect. welcome, because there is a lot more to come!

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Better Health! Excellent, let’s vote for Dr Kerryn Phelps. But hold your horses. While most people will think in terms of improved diagnostics and better, safer, less expensive medications and improved accessibility, others such as Dr Phelps have a different agenda. For some people, usually having some financial stake in alternative healthcare, ‘better health’ unfortunately means that they will exploit the current problems/deficiencies in the healthcare system to promote less effective, or even completely ineffective, medications to the general public. One can almost call this their ‘unique selling point’. But when a medication is completely ineffective none of the other issues (diagnostics, cost, safety etc) matters, and yet people such as Dr Phelps continue to promote this. In my humble opinion, a criminal activity, because ineffective treatments cause unnecessary harm and death.

But she is a clever one. As a well-known public figure, she cannot do all of the dirty work herself because she needs to keep her image squeaky clean. So, to get behind the swing of the bat, it is worthwhile to have a look at her collaborators in what I call, an ‘unholy Alliance’, and their dark world of deceit. Dr Phelps is an adjunct at the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), headed by Prof Alan Bensoussan. She is also part of the NICMs advisory board and states on her campaign website: “Dr Phelps is committed to teaching the next generation of doctors as Conjoint Professor at University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine and in the National Institute of Complementary Medicine at Western Sydney University.”

It is during these advisory board meetings, held in the herbal-essence filled back rooms at Western Sydney university, where they come up with their sinister plans of how to integrate ineffective treatments into the healthcare system. Let me put in plain language; ‘how to BS the public’. Let me explain at the hand of homeopathy (a next article will deal with vaccinations and traditional Chinese medicine).

Support for Homeopathy

Homeopaths are an interesting, although completely delusional, bunch of people – but they do have a very good sense of humour. They will for example take a substance, any substance (even imaginary ones), go into a state of delirium during a process called ‘proving’, and dilute the substance away – completely away. During this process they note their ‘symptoms/state of delirium/feelings’ which then becomes the indications, and like magic, the vial containing only solvent suddenly becomes a ‘medicine’. To understand their sense of humour, you just need to read about any ‘proving document’. Take for example the homeopathic remedy prepared from a Black hole. They affix a vial of alcohol to the viewing end of a telescope focused on Cygnus X-1’s location within the Cygnus constellation. After collecting the ‘substance’ they dilute it into oblivion with the delirious homeopaths taking this ‘medicine’ stating that it; “ … felt their teeth were “drawing inward.” So it makes perfectly sense that this homeopathic remedy is suitable to be prescribed for……..??

You also get homeopathic remedies prepared from; Excrementum caninum (yes, dog shit), condoms, colours, musical notes, Berlin wall etc. (Here you can find my top ten list of homeopathic remedies for 2017. If you can top any of these remedies, please let me know – I am busy compiling 2018’s list). One might now argue that all these examples are on the extremities of homeopathy, and yes sure, but it doesn’t really matter. You can also take any well-known medicinal herb, or even a real medicine such as an antibiotic, but as soon as you ‘prepare’ it according to the homeopathic principles, the medicine disappears which will render even the most effective antibiotic useless. The sad reality is that some homeopaths prescribe their remedies for serious conditions such as malaria and cancer which obviously leads to a lot of unnecessary harm and death.

Sure, the biggest risk is indirect, due to neglecting serious medical conditions, but there are also examples when homeopaths go into such as state delirium that they sometimes manage to get their dilutions wrong. For example; many babies died and hundreds were hospitalised in the US after a toxic substance (deadly nightshade) was not correctly diluted. Clearly homeopathy cannot possibly be included within the ‘Better Health” campaign promise?

So how does Dr Phelps support and exploit this? She operates a number of ‘integrative medicine’ clinics where naturopaths, who are known for their love of homeopathy and anti-vaccination tendencies, are employed. A couple of years ago Dr Phelps made the following comments in an article regarding the funding of homeopathy:

Start of excerpt

“Unfairly targeted?

But some doctors suggest homeopathy is being unfairly targeted.

“It smacks of a crusade to me,” says Professor Kerryn Phelps, president of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA), which promotes “the integration of safe, evidence-based complementary medicines and therapies with current mainstream medical practice”.

She does not believe homeopathy is having the kind of impact on private health premiums Harvey fears, and says there are “bigger fish to fry” when it comes to fixing the healthcare system.

Phelps says homeopathy can be easily criticised because it has a relatively small evidence base.

But, she suggests orthodox treatments are not subject to the same level of scrutiny.

“The Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year produced a meta-analysis of SSRI anti-depressants in mild to moderate depression and found them no better than placebo,” says Phelps, who is Conjoint Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales and a former president of the Australian Medical Association.

“If you are going to exclude treatments that don’t have an evidence base then we have to start looking at pharmaceuticals that don’t have an evidence base, surgical therapies that don’t have an evidence base.”

Matter of evidence

Dr Vicki Kotsirilos, who originally founded AIMA, says she is sympathetic to Harvey’s concerns but rejects some of his conclusions.

“To say that there is no evidence for homeopathy is actually incorrect and unfortunately a lot of people make those statements,” says the Melbourne-based GP, who points to evidence collected by the British Homeopathic Association.

“There have been systematic reviews that have shown that overall homeopathy is not anymore of benefit to placebo or of marginal benefit. But there have been some Cochrane Collaboration reviews that there is a little bit of research available for some therapies.”

She says some of the major studies quoted don’t properly take into account how homeopathy is used.

“When you prescribe homeopathy, it’s often individualised and you won’t use the same homeopathic remedy for one person with a particular disease to another person with the same disease,” says Kotsirilos.

She says homeopathy, and other complementary therapies, are particularly popular among patients who have suffered side-effects from medication, or where surgery is contraindicated.

“Out of all the complementary medicines it is the least understood, with the least amount of research,” says Kotsirilos, who calls for more funding for research.

“We need more research to be able to identify which patients might benefit from homeopathy and in what conditions, bearing in mind that there are people out there who choose to use this and we have to respect their choices.”

End of excerpt

(Vicki Kosirilos is obviously also part of this ‘alliance’ being a member of the NICM’s ‘Research Committee’). A couple of years ago the NHMRC did a thorough study on homeopathy and found it to be, surprise-surprise, ineffective and recommended that the public should not use homeopathy because they are putting their health at risk. This the Alliance cannot have, because it flies in the face of their plans to integrate ineffective remedies. The director of the NICM, Alan Bensoussan published a press release highlighting the ‘methodological flaws’ and that it doesn’t agree with all international reports on homeopathy etc. But it is during these advisory board meetings where they decide how and who should respond to this unfair ‘attack’ on their sinister plans (here you can read the minutes of one of their meetings). This job usually falls in the lap of Carl Gibson, the CEO of Complementary Medicine Australia – their attack dog.

He promptly published that the NHMRC report is “fatally flawed” and ends his press release with the prophetic words “Homeopathy has been around for hundreds of years, and I am sure will be around a lot longer than some of the critics.” Translated it simply means “We (Dr Phelps, the NICM and their whole alliance) do not accept that a complementary medicine is ineffective, and we will do whatever we can to continue to protect, promote and sell it”. They also lodged a complaint at the Commonwealth Ombudsman, claiming that the NHMRC report “…is inaccurate, highly misleading to the public and unjustly damaging to the credibility of the homeopathy sector. It is therefore essential that all published documents relating to the Homeopathy Review are rescinded in their entirety.” (there is some uncertainty about whether this complaint was actually lodged or not).

All that these people need to do is to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of the public, which is enough to ensure that people will continue to buy these ineffective remedies. Dr Phelps will continue to make real healthcare suspect, claim that her ‘medications’ are all natural, safe and evidence-based and that it will also save you a lot of money. But in reality, she and her Alliance does not give a hoot that people, including young children and babies, die because of what they are promoting – for them it is all about money!! (A good example of the type of people you need in such an Alliance is Prof Gregory Kolt. He was even found guilty of fraud; “As a result, the defendant fraudulently obtained a total of $5,864.15 from the Authority over a period of 14 months. When the matter was investigated, the defendant provided false information and documents.”)

A vote for Dr Phelps is a vote to give this unholy Alliance a foot in the federal door. She will provide easier access and opportunities for this Alliance to lobby government ministers in order to integrate their ineffective remedies with conventional healthcare. This, in my view, will be a travesty for the healthcare system. While homeopathy is one of the easier fake medications to debunk, Dr Phelps’s involvement and impact unfortunately gets a lot murkier. In a next article I will focus on vaccinations and how this alliance has infiltrated the World Health Organisation who now promotes, you guessed it, homeopathy and all sorts of other disproven and unproven traditional medicines.